White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaks at the press briefing at the White House in Washington, DC, on October 31, 2017. (NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders took a break from her daily deflections of allegations of sexual assault and collusion against her employer to kindly teach the nation a lesson on how the tax law works.

You see, President Trump has long promised once-in-a-generation tax reform, hoping to use the GOP's majority in the Senate to pass THE BIGGEST TAX CUTS IN HISTORY while adding much-needed simplicity to our morass of a tax law. And that promise begins its path to reality on Wednesday, when the House is slated to release the first draft of proposed legislation.

If you're curious about the changes expected to be contained within that proposed legislation, feel free to read here. But the nature of any proposed tax cuts was not really what Sanders' impromptu dissertation was about; rather, she took it upon herself to address what many Americans are preemptively speculating as they anticipate the release of the GOP plan: will this be a big tax cut for the rich, at the expense of the rest?

What followed was nearly four minutes that no one who was present for the performance will ever get back, and the point was clear: if the richest taxpayers get a bigger tax cut than everyone else, that's perfectly OK, because:

The rich pay more tax to begin with, and

While the rich may get the biggest cut in terms of dollars saved, the remaining 99% of taxpayers would enjoy a bigger percentage reduction in their tax bill.

Here's the video:

If you're particularly astute -- or if you had a valid AOL account back in 2011 - Sanders' words might sound a bit familiar; this is because her words are not her own, but rather taken verbatim from a viral email that spread during the Obama administration to combat the former President's assertion that the rich do not pay their "fair share."

There's just one problem with what Sanders did yesterday, aside from everything. Let's break this thing down Zapruder-style.

I have no problem with the premise: Sanders presents a scenario where ten people share a burden of $100 -- in this case, for booze -- in the same distribution that the population of this country pays federal income tax. Thus, it looks like so:

Person

Share of Burden

% Share of Burden

10

$59

59%

9

$18

18%

8

$12

12%

7

$7

7%

6

$3

3%

5

$1

1%

4

$0

0%

3

$0

0%

2

$0

0%

1

$0

0%

TOTAL

$100

100%

Of course, whether this is accurate depends on how much coin each of the ten reporters earns. For my purposes, I'm going to use the income splits generally used by the Tax Foundation and the Tax Policy Center, which helps to illustrate the reality of the situation. Like so:

Person

Income Percentile

Share of Burden

% Share of Burden

10

>99%

$59

59%

9

90%-99%

$18

18%

8

80% - 90%

$12

12%

7

70% - 80%

$7

7%

6

60% - 70%

$3

3%

5

50% - 60%

$1

1%

4

40% - 50%

$0

0%

3

30% - 40%

$0

0%

2

20% - 30%

$0

0%

1

0% - 20%

$0

0%

TOTAL

$100

100%

There's a reason I'm using these splits. In Sanders' example, #10 pays 60% of the total bill, which corresponds to what the top 1% of taxpayers pay. In addition, the top 10% of taxpayers pay almost 75% of the total tax, and the top 50% of taxpayers pay 98% of the total tax. So if we're going to give the allocation of the beer burden credence, these are the numbers we're going with.

This is where things get interesting. In her story, the bar patrons get their price of drinks cut by $20, am amount which is meant to represent our impending tax cuts. Sanders then explains how that cut should be distributed among the patrons.

The first four get nothing, because they PAID nothing. Fair enough, though when you apply this concept to taxes instead of beers, this may not mean that #'s 1 through 4 are indifferent. After all, if those four were reliant on government programs that had to be cut in order to pay for the tax breaks, they are now getting screwed. In Sanders' terms, it would be akin to #'s 5-10 telling #'s 4-10 that they're no worse off by not getting a price reduction because they didn't pay anything originally, only at the same time, to cover his losses, the bar owner had to raise the jukebox price to $5 a song, so that #3 can no longer end every night by spinning "Dancing Queen" on repeat. But I digress.

That leaves $20 to be split among #'s 5-10, and as Sanders explains it, if it were to be shared equally, each person would enjoy a reduction of $3.33 in their nightly outlay. But that can't work, Sanders explains, because a reduction of that size would leave 5 and 6 being paid to drink, and no one is lucky enough to do that, save for, it would appear, Steve Bannon.

So instead of sharing the cuts equally, the ever-wise bar owner puts his economics degree to good use and recommends his own method for distributing the $20 tax break. His suggestion results in the following allocation:

Person

Income %

Share of Tax

Reduction

% Reduction

10

>99%

$59

$10

16.9%

9

90%-99%

$18

$4

22.2%

8

80% - 90%

$12

$3

25%

7

70% - 80%

$7

$2

28.6%

6

60% - 70%

$3

$1

33%

5

50% - 60%

$1

$1

100%

4

40% - 50%

$0

3

30% - 40%

$0

2

20% - 30%

$0

1

0% - 20%

$0

TOTAL

$100

$21

Problem the first: Sanders allocates $21 of tax cuts when there are only $20. But hey, maybe math ain't her thing. No harm done. The second problem is this: as Sanders points out, its OK in her example that the richest person got the biggest cut in terms of dollars ($10), because he or she got the smallest tax cut in terms of a percentage decrease (16.9%).

But reality, it turns out, is rarely accurate portrayed in a chain letter. Let me explain by first showing how the Tax Policy Center says each bar patron would benefit from a total reduction of $20 under the latest GOP proposal:

Person

Income Percentile

Share of Tax-Sanders

Share of Cut- Sanders

Share of Cut-GOP Plan

10

>99%

$59

$10

$12

9

90%-99%

$18

$4

$4

8

80% - 90%

$12

$3

$1

7

70% - 80%

$7

$2

$1

6

60% - 70%

$3

$1

$1

5

50% - 60%

$1

$1

$1

4

40% - 50%

$0

3

30% - 40%

$0

2

20% - 30%

$0

1

0% - 20%

$0

TOTAL

$100

$21

$20

The ol' barkeep did OK, no? His method for allocating the $20 cut almost exactly matches what the Tax Policy Center says would happen under the most recent GOP proposal if a $20 total tax cut were enacted. This MUST mean that just like in Sanders' example, while the richest person in the pub gets the biggest pure dollar cut ($11), the other five will get increasingly bigger percentage cuts as their respective income decreases, right?

Wrong. There's a problem with this analogy. While in Sanders' example, yes, a reduction in #10's tax bill from $59 to $48 represents only an 18.6% decrease -- while a reduction in #5's bill from $1 to $0 represents a 100% decrease -- there is the little matter of how many people are sharing these cuts!

You see, in Sanders' story, each income class is represented by an equal amount of people; specifically, ONE. Therefore, each cut that is allocated to each class ends up entirely in the pocket of the lone denizen of that class.

But that's not what happens in this little thing we call "reality." There are far fewer taxpayers in the richest 1% than there is in the, say, middle twenty percent. That's kinda' how percentages work. Thus, the richest 1%, who in this example, get a total tax cut of $11, are required to share that $11 cut among very few people. The $1 cut going to #5, however, must be shared among 20% of the total population. This is why, in reality, not only will the richest taxpayers get the biggest cuts in terms of pure dollars, they will also get the biggest cuts in terms of a percentage cut. To illustrate, here's what the TPC says would happen to each of numbers 1 through 10 under the GOP's latest plan, if each row was not reflective of simply one taxpayer, but rather the true number of taxpayers in each income class:

Person

Income %

% Reduction-Sanders

% Reduction - GOP

10

>99%

16.9%

18%

9

90%-99%

22.2%

10%

8

80% - 90%

25%

3%

7

70% - 80%

28.6%

6%

6

60% - 70%

33%

5%

5

50% - 60%

100%

7.2%

4

40% - 50%

7.2%

3

30% - 40%

9.3%

2

20% - 30%

9.3%

1

0% - 20%

10.4%

TOTAL

Whoa, our happy little bar tale has suddenly taken an ugly turn, has it not? Because under the GOP's must recent plan, the average taxpayer in the richest 1% will enjoy a reduction in their tax bill of 18%, while the middle class will see a decrease in tax of 5% -9%.

It gets worse when you look at things from a percentage-of-after-tax-income perspective, where the richest 1% -- #10 in Sanders' story -- will walk away with an 8.5% increase in after-tax cash, while everyone from #7 on down will see a bump of just 1%.

Then there's the little matter that according to the Tax Policy Center, one-in-three taxpayers in #5, #6, and #7 would actually experience an INCREASE in their tax bill, meaning in Sanders' terms, they'd have to chip in MORE after the price of booze was reduced while #10 pockets the extra cash.

Finally, Sanders' story speaks to a bigger issue: why did she feel the need to spin a yarn justifying large tax cuts to the richest 1% when President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have both gone on record as saying that under their plan, #10 would pay the exact same amount for beers before and after the $20 price reduction. In other words, the richest 1% would experience no net benefit after tax reform is complete.

Perhaps that is in fact the case, the richest 1% will get no tax cut, and Sanders' performance yesterday will go down as a bigger waste of time than it already appears to have been. But maybe, just maybe, the point of Sanders' speech was to set the stage for what's coming.